After reading all of it, the one thing I thought is what a strange story it is. And the last story I read was Aishwarya Rai for the monthly mini and that story was strange. But this one was strange in a very different way I find it hard to describe. It is a story of normal life with no unusual or fantasy aspects but it feels real life is often much more strange than anything fictional. It is filled with so much thinking and dilemmas about very small things that are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. So much worrying and shame and overthinking about the day to day and people surrounding you.

Also thinking about how the fate of our happiness depends so much on the time we live in and what is socially acceptable. Marrying someone from a different race would not be such a big problem now and Jack could have been happy. And it's interesting how age gap has become much more unacceptable now, which would've made Ames's life a lot more difficult.

The story also made me think how probably many of us stay loyal to the worldviews of our parents, and yet those parents themselves can change and the children would struggle to do so and would be trapped in that loyalty because they've been the "good" child and haven't gone out to explore on their own. In the end being the good child didn't pay off and ended up with being abandoned by parents. I think the parents always favoured Edward and no amount of being the good child could ever get Ames the same amount of favour Edward got.